cloning

I wish I could clone myself so I could get more done in a single lifetime. I may have some ambition, but I'm not one of those hyper ambitious people who pursues multiple advanced degrees, while traveling the world and raising a family. Mostly, I want to be mellow, and allow time to savor the experiences that really make me happy.

But, if I could clone myself (or get cloned, I don't care who does it really, as long as it's done well), I could keep my wonderful job at the beautiful Getty Villa, take the exciting new job at LACMA, get another job at the Natural History Museum, and maybe another one at the zoo, and also do field research like Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, and be a wildlife photographer. Funny how all of these involve "working," though. If I really had the power to clone myself, I guess I should think bigger. Some clones could work -- because I really do love the work I do, or imagine myself doing in these various scenarios; and it's good to have the structure and community that a working environment or professional field offers -- but other clones could travel the world simultaneously, visiting the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Petra, the wildlife and cultures of the African savanna, the antiquity of Greece, the tropics of Hawaii or Costa Rica. And yet other clones could just live a life of leisure, lying around sipping fancy drinks in exotic locations -- but I think these last clones would eventually get very bored and commit suicide.

Cloning is all well and good, but I presume you don't get to actually experience all those lives yourself. You're just one of the many versions of yourself. You still only get to live your one life, and you can just be proud of the others, or make them report back to you monthly with tales of their adventures. Maybe a better solution is time travel. Then you could try out one career or path for as long as you like, and then when you're ready to try something different, just turn back the clock to age 20 or something, and set out down a different path. But again, would you be able to remember each of your various lives? I guess you'd need to be immortal really, and then you wouldn't need cloning or time travel; you'd have all the time in the world to try out everything that catches your fancy. But I suppose there are drawbacks to that too . . . or so they say. (Immortality: It's all fun and games until your sun supernovas. But wouldn't that be a quick death anyway? And come on, immortality lasts forever, even if you don't have a physical realm in which to exist, right?)